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OXFORD PAMPHLETS
1914-1915
pHRrsfilAS AND
THE WAR
A SERMON
BY
T. B, STRONG
DEAN OF CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD
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HUMPHREY MILFORD
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The following sermon was preached before the Uni-
versity in the Cathedral, Christ Church, on Christmas
Day 1914 by the writer, as Dean of the Cathedral, in
accordance with custom.
Walter Clinton Jackson Library
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Special Collections & Rare Books
World War I Pamphlet Collection
Gift of Greensboro Public Library
CHRISTMAS AND THE WAR
\' And the servants of the householder came and said unto
him, Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field?
whence then hath it tares ? And he said unto them,
An enemy hath done this.' — £t. Matthew xiii, 27 and 28
(part).
Any one who reads the Bible carefully will not fail,
I think, to notice two very remarkable points in the view
of human life which is found there. On the one hand,
we find a very clear and uncompromising view of sin.
The characters whose lives we read of there are repre-
sented as human in this respect, that they are beset
with temptations, and not infrequently fall. And when
this happens there is no doubt as to the view which the
writers take of them. When David commits his great
sin, for instance, he is frankly condemned ; there is no
attempt to represent him as appealing from conventional
^standards to a higher law ; he has just committed murder
and adultery, and he must repent and face his punish-
ment, and that is all. So, there are no excuses made
for St. Peter's denials of our Lord ; he was warned of his
danger, but he was headstrong and self-confident, and
fell accordingly. The great figures of Bible history are
human in this, that they are liable to fall, and when they
do their excellence in other respects does not mitigate
judgement : their sin is wicked — just like the sin of any-
4 CHRISTMAS AND THE WAR
body else. And, on the other hand, the Bible is always
looking forward, not to progress but to perfection. It
asks for freedom from sin altogether ; it puts before us
the picture of an ideal king who will rule God's people
in righteousness, an ideal Church without spot or
wrinkle or any such thing. And all this is set out as
inevitable, as being near at hand, as already started and
at work, with full knowledge and frankest recognition
of the actual state of the world. There is never an^^P
disposition to minimize the evil in the world, or to deny
the fundamental wickedness of this evil ; or, on the other
hand, to put up with anything less than absolute per-
fection. The followers of Christ have to be perfect, as
their Father in Heaven is perfect.
Now this contrast between what is and what ought
to be, which the Bible accepts so frankly, is always
before us, is a source of much disturbance of mind, not
unnaturally, to many people, and sets them to work
trying to explain it. It involves them in discussions of
the origin of evil, the freedom of the will, the omnipo-
tence of God, and so on. We do not find any such dis-
cussions in the Bible. On the contrary, it is always
implied that if we are perplexed God Himself is not,
and that His wisdom and providence govern and control
the whole order of the world, and will know how to dea^k
with those elements in the world which seem to b^^
thwarting His purpose. So when our Lord meets with
unbelief, it is in this conviction that He rests His con-
fidence. When the Jews ask murmuringly, ' How can
a man, whose father and mother we know, come and tell
us that He has come do^vn from heaven ? ' He is sad,
but not astonished. God has the whole matter in His
control, even unbelief ; no man can come to Me,
He says, unless the Father that sent Me draw him.
CHRISTMAS AND THE WAR 5
St. Paul in 2 Thessalonians, and St. John in the Revela-
tion, are prepared to see a tide of evil rising higher than
ever before, and they do not falter at the vision ; God
has His hand upon the world and guides it, and He
knows when and how the power of evil can be met and
finally crushed.
The Parable of the Tares, from which my text comes,
puts this lesson in a most vivid form. It describes for
'us, if we may say so, the look of the Kingdom of God
in the world. Our Lord had come preaching the King-
dom, and He knew that many people expected that
when the Kingdom came it would come with a great
convulsion of nature and social life ; the Kmg would
come and visibly destroy His enemies, banish all evil,
and produce at a blow times of peace and righteousness.
And the parable warns us against this expectation.
The householder has sown good seed, of that there is no
doubt : but there is a- watchful enemy near who is sure
to sow tares if he can. So when the servants come and
tell him that the tares have already begun to appear,
he is sad but he is not surprised. He knows the work
of the enemy, and he knows what the result — so harassing
and perplexing to faith — will necessarily be. It is that
his field over which he has taken so much pains will
kbring forth a mixed crop, like fields over which no such
trouble has been taken. There will be wheat, no doubt,
but there will also be tares ; people will come and look
and take note and say that after all it is very like other
fields, that it is clear that you cannot keep tares out,
however hard 3'ou try, and that, perhaps, as they seem
part of the nature of things, they cannot be so mischievous
after all.
Our Lord warns us in this parable that the Church
will look like that in the world ; it will be a mixed
6 CHKISTMAS AND THE WAR
thing ; many of the evils which ought to have no place
in it will be there ; and the world will take note of the
fact. And it is this that will cause us so much pain and
try us so hardly. Inside the Church, we can listen to
the comforting assurance of the householder that the
mischief, though serious, is not beyond remedy and is
not permanent ; we can cherish that hope. But it is
when we hear the comments of the world that we ^L
understand how serious the mischief is. It weakens^
all the witness of the followers of Christ, if it can be said
with a fair show of reason : ' They are just like everybody
else ; they talk big, and make large promises ; but
when you come to look at them all their talk vanishes
away ; they do not practise what they preach.'
We cannot, I think, avoid thinking of this lesson
which Christ teaches us in the Parable of the Tares at
this present time. For we are in face of a contrast that
makes, or ought to make, the whole Christian world
ashamed. To-day we recall the Birth of Christ and all
that it meant for the world ; how with Him a new force
came into the life of man, strong enough to deliver
him from his sins, to break off the chains of bad habit
that held him from fulfilling his own highest hopes, and
to bring him again into the favour and blessing of his
God. This treasure was committed to the keeping ofA
Christ's followers, and the gift of it was to issue in peace
throughout the race of men. Quarrelling and tyranny and
war belonged to the old bad state of things when man
was at variance with God and had no complete guidance
for his religion or his moral life. For nineteen hundred
years this gift has been in the world. It has won great
triumphs ; individuals and nations have won victories
in its strength over themselves and their temptations.
It has had reverses, and the confident joy with which
CHRISTMAS AND THE WAR 7
the first Christians set out upon their task of spreading
it through the world is hard to reclaim. And now those
nations which have the strongest claim to represent
the effect of the gift and message of Christ in their
outward life have fallen into a state of war and bitter,
savage hate. As w^e look back upon the events preceding
the outbreak, and as the papers get into print from
various sources that passed among those in whose
'hands the issue lay, we seem to see how inevitable
it all was ; but this, even if we know, as we think we
do, who made it inevitable, does not modify the judge-
ment we must pass upon the position of Europe at this
time ; it is profoundly un-Christian ; it does represent
a failure, on a tragic scale, of peoples professedly
Christian to live up to their principles. I do not mean
that we were not right to go to war ; we should have
failed hardly less completely if we had refused ; it
would be a grievous and ruinous failure now, if we were
to shrink from sacrifice, however great and painful,
which may be necessary to secure triumph for our
cause. I do not ignore, again, the wonderful feeling
of unity in our own nation and empire which the call
to arms has evoked. Still less do I ignore the splendid
and chivalrous valour with which the young men of
k England have come forward, sacrificing, in many cases—
in all cases, postponing — their hopes and prospects in
the way of useful civil work, and ready to offer their
lives. I should indeed be unworthy of holding office in
this House and University if I felt no pride in the spirit
and temper of those who have gone out from here — -
and I know that they are but representatives of the
whole young manhood of this country ; from all dis-
tricts and classes the story is the same. We do right to
glory in this ; to face our trials bravely, and to rejoice
8 CHRISTMAS AND THE WAR
in the justice of our cause. But when all this is said and
done, there is no help for it ; we must admit that the
war is profoundly in opposition to the whole message
of Christmas Day. It is like the tares in the field ; it
comes from the old mischief of the enemy of mankind.
It will develop splendid courage and self-control and
tenderness, and we know that God has His hand upon
it all and will work His will through it ; but war is not
the Christian way in which these Christian virtues I
ought to be developed, nor the way in which God likes
best to carry out His purpose.
Now this is, perha23s, one of the most important lessons
of the Parable of the Tares, that if you want really to
attain the end which God has in view, you must set about
it in God's way. The servants came to the householder
and said, ' Here are all these tares : shall we go and pull
them up '/ ' That seems the obvious thing to do ; the
tares have got there through sin and the malice of the
enemy ; why not pull them up at once ? But that is not
the householder's way. It is, if we may use modern
wordsj the way of the pacifist — the peace-at-any-price
man. He will bring about the millennium by not having
any war. But that is not the right way, though it seems
so complete and persuasive ; you must let your tares
grow with the wheat. The war ought not to be there, >
but you must fight it out now that you are in it. And
one of the things it has got to teach us is that there is no
way of finding peace ' as a real and permanent policy '
except the way of Christ Himself. Surely we have
already learnt out of this war and its circumstances how
not to attain peace. Various methods have been put
before us. There was the method of militarism — and it is
hard to understand how any one ever believed in that.
The militarist motto is, ' If you want peace, prepare for
CHRISTMAS AND THE WAR 9
war. Arm yourself to the teeth ; find out by any
means, high or low, what everybody else is doing ; be
ready always to anticipate a blow ; make yourself
feared, so that everybody will be afraid to go to war with
you.' It is hardly possible to conceive a peace less like
the peace of God than that which is attained in this way.
Or, again, it has been said, ' Trust to the financiers. They
will show you the advantages of trade and commerce,
the dislocation in these things which comes of war, the
theoretical impossibility of war, in modern days, when
nations and their interests are so closely intertwined one
with another.' This has broken down. In spite of all
these considerations, here we are with the whole of
Europe in a blaze. And what is more, commerce not
only fails to prevent such wars as that we are now engaged
in, it leads to serious trouble — ^to veiled civil warfare —
in the various states concerned. Certainly the exchange
of commodities under the unfettered operation of the
laws of supply and demand does not produce God's
peace, or anybody else's peace. And then there is
education. This, at any rate, ought to keep people sane
and prevent their being swept by j)assion. Certainly it
ought ; and certainly there are people whose learning
leads to a balance of mind and a sense of proportion
which enable them to think justly on any matter pre-
sented to them. But you cannot count on education to
produce this result. Learning sometimes makes people
querulous and anxious about small points ; sometimes
it disables them from judging decisively about anything :
sometimes it enables them to defend theories, with great
ingenuity and persuasiveness, which no one with an open-
air knowledge of mankind would believe for a moment.
So far as sheer weight of book-learning is concerned the
German professoriate is the most learned body of men in
10 CHRISTMAS AND THE WAR
the world, but their learning has not, at this present time,
made for either wisdom or peace.
All these things — education, commerce, even the power
and will for self-defence — are things good in themselves
in different degrees and for different ends. But the
peace of God will not come through any of them or all
of them combined. The way of God's peace is the way
which the Son of God laid down when He became in-
carnate : He being in the form of God thought it not A
a thing to be grasped at to be equal with God, but
emptied Himself and was found in fashion as a man.
He sought not His own, but made Himself of no account.
That is the way in which peace on earth will come, and
the hope is that out of this war we may learn something
of this and cease to look for peace in the wrong way.
The war is too big a thing and involves too many nations
for anjrthing to remain as it was before. We have trusted
too much, in the past, I am sure, to the wrong things,
and the result is that till the war shook us all together
we had class arrayed against class, and all sorts of causes
of bitterness active amongst us. Whatever we do in the
field and on the sea, we shall have suffered real defeat
in this war if we go back into the old conditions and
resuscitate the old party watchwords and get back into
the old narrow grooves of useless and interminable con- ^^
flict. If, by God's grace and help, the Allies win in theW
field, we must look forward to a great clearing away of
old prejudices and cant phrases and delusions, to a more
frank appeal to the principles of the religion which we
profess, and to a more trustful attempt to attain God's
end in His own way. There is no doubt as to what that
way is ; the story of Christmas Day sets it before us
beyond the possibility of mistake. The world as we
know it, and the Church as we know it, is a mixed thing
CHRISTMAS AND THE WAR 11
in which the work of the enemy of mankind has found
entrance, and the only power that can destroy this work
is the Son of God, who for ns men and for our salvation
came down, as on this day, from heaven, and was in-
carnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was
made man.
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